Industrial powerhouses plan $51M in Houston deals

Two veteran real estate executives from Atlanta have set their sights on Houston with plans to develop nearly 1.1 million square feet of speculative industrial assets within a short period of time.

Chairman Ray Weeks and CEO Forrest Robinson with Atlanta-based Weeks Robinson Properties are working on their first Houston projects since forming the real estate investment and development firm in 2008. The pair are deploying $150 million they raised in 2011 to buy and develop commercial properties across the South.

In 1979, Weeks formed Weeks Corp., which after going public in 1994, merged with Indianapolis-based Duke Realty to become Duke-Weeks Realty Corp. When he left the company in 2001, its name was changed to Duke Realty Corp. (NYSE: DRE), a real estate investment trust that now has a market capitalization of $3.95 billion.

Robinson spent 22 years working with Weeks at his namesake company. Before cofounding Weeks Robinson Properties, Robinson founded and was president of the industrial division of Atlanta-based Cousins Properties Inc. (NYSE: CUZ), in which Weeks also was involved.

Weeks Robinson will develop local projects in a joint venture with Houston-based Avera Cos., according to Trey Odom, Avera’s president and CEO. He would not disclose Avera’s stake in the partnership.

The joint venture broke ground in late May on one building and will launch two more within a month in a 40-acre business park called Rampart Corporate Center at West Little York and Hollister, said Odom.

In addition, the Weeks Robinson-Avera partnership is developing three buildings in Century Plaza Distribution Center on Interstate 45, between Airtex and Richey.

The development cost of Rampart Corporate Center, which was designed by Houston-based Power Brown Architecture, will be more than $30 million when it’s completed, said Odom.

The first 131,000-square-foot building that broke ground recently does not have a tenant yet, but Odom said a national retailer wants to take 80,000 square feet in the facility. Houston-based Angler Construction LLC will have the speculative facility ready in October, he said.

Next up in Rampart will be a 300,000- square-foot spec facility that will break ground any day now and be finished in the first quarter of 2013. And a third building in the business park, a 132,000-square-foot spec facility, will start within a month and be ready in the first quarter.

Century Plaza Distribution Center represents another $21 million investment for the joint venture. The developers are assembling three tracts with a total of 28 acres in an existing business park. The last of the series of land acquisitions is scheduled to close Aug. 1, Odom said. Plans call for three buildings with a total of 500,000 to be constructed simultaneously in the project.